Ave Maria by Bach and Gounod: free violin sheet music, tutorial, history, and practice tips

Ave Maria is one of the most recognizable classical melodies, and it’s so beautiful on the violin. Even if you’re new to playing, the calm, singing melody will allow you to work on musical expression without needing to use advanced techniques.

The piece that we know today brings together J.S. Bach’s music from the 1700s with a melody Charles Gounod added more than a century later.

In today’s post, you’ll find easy violin sheet music, a free scale warmup, practice tips, and a video tutorial. Let’s dive in!

Free C Major Scale Warmup for Ave Maria

This arrangement of Ave Maria is in the key of C Major, which has no sharps or flats.

It’s so helpful to warm up in the same key as the piece you’re working on. It gets your fingers warmed up, you can check your intonation, feel comfortable with the finger patterns you’ll use later, and you can focus on making the smooth, clear tone we’ll want to use in the piece.

Set yourself up for success and download the free C Major scale warmup below to prepare for Ave Maria:

The Story Behind Bach and Gounod’s Ave Maria

Ave Maria has a really interesting, complex history!

J.S. Bach didn’t compose the melody that we recognize as Ave Maria, but instead, wrote the accompaniment.

He composed his Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846 as part of Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier in the early 18th century. The melody is made up of flowing broken chords and arpeggios, and is a very famous piece on its own.

Over 100 years later in 1852, Charles Gounod wrote the Ave Maria melody on top of Bach’s Prelude. He originally called this composition Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach. The work was written for solo violin, piano, and optional organ.

In 1859, the Latin Ave Maria text was associated with the melody in a vocal arrangement, which is how it acquired the name we know this melody by today.

How to Play Ave Maria on Violin

Now that you’ve warmed up, downloaded your sheet music, and learned a bit about the piece, let’s start learning it!

In the tutorial, I first play through the piece with accompaniment. Then we can play together at a slower practice speed, and you can try your hand at playing with just the piano accompaniment slowly. Then we’ll do the same process up to tempo!

Practice Tips for Ave Maria

1. Warm up in C Major

Like I mentioned earlier, it’s so helpful to warm up in the key of your piece. In this case, we want to warm up in C Major to warm up our fingers with the finger patterns we’ll need in this key.

Listen carefully to your intonation and tone while playing through the scale slowly.

Try playing the scale with long bows to prepare for the smooth, connected sound we want to have in Ave Maria.

2. Save enough bow for the long notes

Ave Maria needs a calm, sustained legato sound. It can be difficult to pace your bow when playing long notes back to back, but we don’t want to run out of bow and hear gaps between notes!

Practice dividing your bow up into quarters, and when playing whole notes, use one quarter of your bow for each beat.

3. Keep bow changes smooth

In addition to using just enough bow, we want to keep our bow changes smooth to avoid pauses and interruptions to the melody.

Practice a difficult phrase on an open string first. Listen for bumps or accents at each bow change. If you hear any, you’re likely either stopping the bow or moving with a faster speed at the start of a new bow direction.

Keep your bow speed steady as the bow changes direction, and keep the bow moving even while changing directions. Keeping your right wrist flexible will help pad out the changes without any breaks in the sound.

When you’re able to play on an open string cleanly, add the left hand notes back in.

If you’d like more bowing tips and exercises, check out this article!

4. Shape the melody like a singer

Although Ave Maria was originally intended for violin and piano, it’s also famously known as a vocal and piano piece. Take inspiration from the vocal version to shape your phrases!

Once the notes feel comfortable, move beyond simply playing the correct notes in tune. Listen to where each phrase grows and how it settles.

Use your bow speed and dynamics to create the shapes you find in the music.

Try Ave Maria on violin

Warming up with the C Major scale, using the sheet music, watching the tutorial, and trying the practice tips will help you learn Ave Maria with a very solid foundation.

One of the great things about this piece is that the goal isn’t speed. A slow, steady tempo suits this piece and it’ll give you time to focus on your tone.

Before you go, be sure to download the free music!

Want to learn more relaxing classical music? You may be interested in learning Brahms’ Lullaby or Pachelbel’s Canon in D next.

Have you heard Ave Maria before? What drew you to learning it? I’d love to hear your experience or questions in the comments!